Deeplinks Blog posts about DMCA

The lawsuit filed last week by music publishers BMG and Round Hill against Cox Communications could be the next battle in the major media companies’ long-term campaign to turn Internet service providers into copyright police. BMG and Round Hill are asking a federal court to declare that ISPs like Cox must terminate their customers’ accounts whenever the publishers’ agent—a company called Rightscorp—says so. Because Cox didn’t immediately kick subscribers off of its service after Rightscorp accused those subscribers of copyright infringement, BMG and Round Hill say that Cox should pay potentially millions of dollars in penalties.

When state officials seek to censor online speech, they're going to use the quickest and easiest method available. For many, copyright takedown notices do the trick. After years of lobbying and increasing pressure from content industries on policymakers and tech companies, sending copyright notices to take media offline is easier than ever.

When you buy a book, a record, or a movie, you can expect to be able to enjoy it, on your own terms, for as long as you want. But the same cannot always be said about video games. Over the past several years, video game publishers have increasingly required connection with one of their own servers in order to "unlock" core functionality for gameplay. Publishers often take those servers offline once they stop being economical to run, leaving a typical gamer unable to play her lawfully purchased games. And this affects not just video game players, but archivists and researchers who want to preserve and study the history of games as cultural artifacts.

If you own a phone or a tablet, you should be able to run whatever software you want on it. It seems like a simple truth, but there are a surprising number of hurdles in the way. Most pressingly, if the manufacturer of that phone or tablet wants to, they can misuse the law to limit your control over the device long after your purchase. This week, EFF has filed a petition with the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office to extend and expand the exemption that allows you to "jailbreak" your phone from those restrictions, without running afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).